Saturday – Live at Leeds

Saturday April 30th saw Leeds flexing its musical muscle in the fifth year of the three day festival Live at Leeds. With 14 venues open for businesses and over 150 bands to choose from, it was a long but great day of new finds and musical shocks.

Our day began at The Well, an interesting venue a few minutes walk from the city centre. Despite being a little rough around the edges, The Well had plenty of character and after a trip to the bar we moved into the downstairs live area. We waited for our first band of the day ‘Little Parades’ to finish sound checking in the unusual light of four large and bright safety bulbs, which didn’t immediately give off the best atmosphere in the particularly dingy and empty room. But as the normal stage lights came on and room was illuminated everything was put right. Little Parades are an incredibly new band, forming in the last months of 2010 yet seemed to be already well established. They put on an interesting live show, combining their atmospheric dreamy ambience with a selection of visuals to the side of the stage. Yet, despite thinking they would no doubt be more suited to an outdoors event; I came away feeling a little underwhelmed for the start of a long day of gigging.
The next band would certainly wake me up from the lethargic and mellow tones of the first. Dashing across the city centre we headed to one of Leeds most popular venues, The Cockpit, to see hardcore heavy punk act Kong. Mask wearing, screaming men making loud and aggressive noise isn’t normally my cup of tea, yet I was persuaded to give the band a try. To my surprise the room was heaving, with hardly a space to work through the crowd. At first, I didn’t think much of the band, a noisy mess of simple punk riffs and odd screaming, yet as the set progressed, it was clear that the tracks were incredibly well constructed, the sound was of perverting positive guitar picking with manic drumming and impressively loud screeching vocals. Despite the band performing far too early to really energise the crowd, they certainly grabbed our attention, and provided a pretty electric and engaging show.

We next returned to The Well to catch Milk white white Teeth, a mix of electro choral pop comparable to a playful mix of Two Door Cinema Club and Friendly Fires. Unfortunately the venue was so packed and noisy I couldn’t really hear the band and I honestly felt I was missing out on a good performance. Nation of Shopkeepers was next, a particularly intriguing venue, with a stage for acts to the left of the bar. Leeds based band FILMS came on stage and played an attractive but short set of lo-fi electro, with the low and soulful voice of lead singer Joe Newman (comparable to Bombay Bicycles Club’s Jack Steadman) coming across as particularly impressive.

With the possibility of getting in for the start of Live at Leeds Headliner James Blake seeming gradually less likely, I went back across the city centre and entered the atmospheric venue of Leeds Holy Trinity Church to see Bear Mask, the combined effort of Adam Gaworski and Dan Bell. As soon as they began they performed an amazing set of 80s inspired electro rock. A real pleasure to watch, the band put on a great live show, with the lead singer at one point walking through the first few rows of pews impressively belting his emotional and dark lyrics. It was certainly one of my highlights of the day.
After watching a disappointing ten minutes of ex-This Et Al lead singer’s latest moniker Stalking Horses at Leeds Met, I went round the corner to catch a few minutes of London based Mazes. I had seen the band play a few days before supporting Best Coast at the Queens Social Club in Sheffield, and was again impressed by the band’s effortless lo-fi sound. Clearly drawing influences from 90s Brit pop as well as American grunge, the bands set was surprisingly refreshing and seemed to go down well with the crowd.
The day’s biggest shock came from the unlikeliest artists; Slow Club. Playing to a large crowd at Leeds University’s Stylus, (a venue that seemed totally inappropriate) they played an unenthusiastically average set. Being a fan of the band for a while, I was particularly disappointed by their lack of interest and usual intimacy with the crowd. Despite their most well tracks, such as the rousing ‘Giving up on Love’ eventually making some fans move, the audience seemed generally disinterested with the act. Lead singer Becky Taylor repeatedly told the crowd how boring it would be to play new tracks and mentioned the missing new additional band members might hamper the quality of the songs. She was right, as the new tracks sounded empty and incomplete. There seemed a general feeling of disappointment with the usually mesmerising band.

After a fraught discussion of which headliner to see, we settled for Anna Calvi. Options included The Futureheads, Trophy Wife, Dinosaur Pile Up, Frightened Rabbit, Aloe Blacc and a few others, but we certainly made the right decision.
Leeds Holy Trinity Church was to host Anna Calvi, a brilliant venue for her style of music. The main room was packed, and we managed to squeeze onto some pews to the side of the stage, where unfortunately I couldn’t see a thing. She performed a wonderful set, perfected by the echoing acoustics of room which seemed to reflect the amazing range of her voice, from thunderous choruses to mellow verse. Theatrical and operatic, she created an almost stage show like performance, backed by her band and her own musical talent on guitar. The artist returned for an encore and played Jezebel, one of her most recognised tracks and received one of the loudest applause I had heard all day. I was astounded by her movie-like approach; it was a seductive live performance, passionate and masterful.
Fake Laugh by Bear Mask
No More Words by Anna Calvi